BROOKLYN, NY -- Developer Forest City Ratner's planned basketball arena
would be set back a mere 20 feet from Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, two
of Brooklyn's main arteries, which intersect at what is already a heavily
congested choke-point abutting the proposed arena site. Security experts
agree that substantial setbacks for facilities like an arena are required
to protect against vehicular bombs and other terror attacks. Twenty feet
is not substantial.

This major security flaw in Ratner's Atlantic Yards development plan in
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, was revealed by the developer, after weeks
of stonewalling, over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in a New
York Times article.

In mid-October, just two weeks before the grand opening of Newark's Prudential
Center arena, that city's police department mandated that at least two
streets adjacent to the new arena would be closed during events as a necessary
precaution against terrorist attacks. Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy
told the Newark
Star-Ledger, "you can't construct an arena and put it right
against a street in a post 9/11 world. So we're playing catch-up and taking
measures to make sure it's safe."

The Newark arena is set back about 25 feet from its nearest abutting streets.
Forest City Ratner's arena would be set back only 20 feet, in most places,
from busy avenues. But unlike in Newark, the NYPD says that street closures
will not be necessary in Brooklyn; according to the Times, the NYPD "found
that the arena was safe and streets need not be closed on game days."

"It is a major security flaw to have a mere twenty foot distance
between Ratner's planned arena and congested Brooklyn avenues. What makes
the Brooklyn arena's proximity to streets different from the Newark arena
that it will not require street closings? This is the key question that
Governor Spitzer and his Homeland Security Deputy Michael Balboni, Mayor
Bloomberg, ESDC President/CEO Avi Schick and NYPD Commissioner Kelly all
need to answer," said Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) spokesman
Daniel Goldstein. "One can assume that during the Newark arena planning
process, Newark's police officials ‘found that the arena was safe
and streets need not be closed'--just like the NYPD is saying now--only
to decide at the last minute that streets did indeed need to
be closed. There is every reason to think that scenario can occur in Brooklyn;
the problem is that Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues cannot be closed for
230 events per year."

Twenty-six community groups, led by DDDB, filed
a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in April 2007 (that suit
is still pending) in which
they asserted, in part, that the Empire State Development Corporation
(ESDC) violated state environmental review laws by failing to consider
the potential security issues and impacts from a terrorist attack on the
proposed Atlantic Yards project in its Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS). During the environmental review of the project, the three jurisdictional
community boards, community groups, elected officials and individuals
commented on the need for the ESDC to study security and terrorism. The
ESDC--the state agency overseeing the project--responded that: "Emergency
scenarios such as a large-scale terrorist attack similar to the World
Trade Center attack, a biological or chemical attack, or a bomb are not
considered a reasonable worst-case scenario and are therefore outside
of the scope of the EIS." Tellingly, the 20-foot setback distance
was never mentioned in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement
or General Project Plan which were both approved by the ESDC Board of
Directors in December 2006.

"When ESDC denied that a terrorist bomb attack on the arena is a
‘reasonable worst-case scenario' worthy of study, we wonder if ESDC
officials even knew that the proposed arena would only be 20 feet from
the street. The attendant risks from that mere 20-foot setback present
a very reasonable worst-case scenario," said DDDB Legal Director
Candace Carponter. "If ESDC did know about the inadequate setback
from the surrounding streets, then they have been grossly irresponsible
by ignoring it. And if they did not know what the setback would be then
they could not have logically determined what is or isn't a reasonable
worst-case scenario worthy of study. Since the NYPD and ESDC have refused
to answer anyone asking for the simple fact of setback distance, we wonder
if they were even aware of the insufficient setback until it appeared
in the newspaper."

"The revelation that the arena would be only 20 feet from Atlantic
and Flatbush, a fact that has clearly been hidden by Ratner and the ESDC
for more than three years, presents the final evidence that the Atlantic
Yards plan requires an independent security review," Goldstein said.

Atlantic Yards would be a glass-walled arena surrounded by glass-walled
skyscrapers, abutting the busiest (and frequently gridlocked) intersection
in Brooklyn, on top of the third-largest transportation hub in the city,
which was the site of a thwarted terror attack in 1997. It would be the
densest residential community in the United States, by far. Forest City
Ratner projects about 230 events per year at the arena.

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's July 2005 white paper, "Terrorism,
Security and the Proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards High Rise and Arena
Development Project" can be found here: http://www.dddb.net/php/reading/security.php

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DON'T DESTROY BROOKLYN leads a broad-based community coalition
fighting for development that will unite our communities instead of
dividing and destroying them